Dovizioso: We know the gap is still big

Ducati's Andrea Dovizioso made some gains with his Desmosedici GP13 on the second day of the MotoGP test at Sepang, but concedes a 'big gap' remains to his rivals.

The Italian star's best lap of 2m 2.379s left him 1.830s adrift of Dani Pedrosa and behind newcomer Bradley Smith in eighth place on the satellite Yamaha M1.

“Today we tried a set-up with the electronics system, some setup of the bike and the chassis Nicky [Hayden] already used. We improved a little bit everywhere,” said Dovizioso, who left the Tech 3 Yamaha team to join the factory outfit for 2013.

“The [new] chassis is a little better in the last part of the braking, so I can brake a little bit harder, and we improved the set-up with the traction control.

“The track was better for everybody, but the gap became a little smaller.

“We are here to make some set-up changes to understand the way forward. Apart from the chassis and new front fork from Ohlins we don't have new parts,” he added.

“My feeling improves with more kilometres. But the gap is still big, we already know.